交番
A kōban is a local police activity base within a police station’s jurisdiction in Japan. Officers receive visitors there and leave it for patrols, community visits and incidents. Kōban are mainly urban bases staffed in rotation; a residential chūzaisho normally places an officer and family within the community. Both connect a local area with a larger policing network.
A kōban belongs within a police-station and local-district network.
Counter service, patrol and visits to homes or businesses are different activities.
Rotation at a kōban and residence at a chūzaisho are usual patterns with exceptions.
The Community Police Operating Rules divide a police station’s jurisdiction into local areas served by kōban or chūzaisho. A post is therefore a base within a larger network. The size of its building does not make it an independent police force.
An abstract district network, rather than a map or a fixed number of posts.
The rules identify daytime and nighttime population, households, area, administrative boundaries and incident patterns among placement considerations. A base relates to the territory it serves; its appearance or proximity alone does not establish a complete district boundary.
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police describe kōban as mainly urban posts with officers working in rotation, and chūzaisho as normally having an officer reside locally with a family. The operating rules also allow day-duty arrangements in specified local circumstances. These are patterns rather than one identical staffing model.
Directions, lost-property reports, consultation and protection for people such as lost children are among the Metropolitan Police’s listed activities. These encounters connect everyday local requests with policing, alongside investigation and traffic duties.
Patrols gather knowledge of the area while addressing crime prevention, traffic guidance, hazards and protection. The kōban supplies a base and point of contact, but the officers’ working space extends into the surrounding streets and community.
Community liaison visits take officers to households and businesses to hear concerns and requests and share crime, accident and disaster-prevention information. Their emphasis differs from a street patrol: they establish contact with particular residents and workplaces.
Tokyo’s kōban consultants are retired police officers who use their experience for directions, consultation and support. They are not serving officers and do not conduct criminal investigations or traffic enforcement merely because they work at a kōban. The people at a post can have different roles.
Patrols and incidents can temporarily take officers away from the desk. Osaka Police describe absence notices and telephone arrangements connecting a post with its police station. The counter and the surrounding area are different locations of the same continuing work.
The National Police Agency’s history begins with Tokyo patrols based on tonsho in 1871. In 1874, designated kōbansho initially had no dedicated buildings: officers went out from a base to stand watch in rotation. This rotating watch also explains the name kōban.
Facilities were gradually added to designated locations, providing bases for neighborhood patrol. Kōbansho were renamed hashutsujo in 1881, and dispatch and residential posts spread nationwide in 1888. Rotation and residence established two important patterns in the later system.
The National Archives’ institutional history records the former Police Act taking effect in 1948, followed by the 1954 revision that established the National Police Agency. Local posts need to be understood within these changes in police administration, rather than through a name assumed to imply an unchanged organization.
People continued to call the posts kōban while hashutsujo was their official designation. The formal name changed to kōban in July 1994. Tokyo Police also describe Roman-letter KOBAN signs to aid recognition. Names and building markers, including the familiar red light, are visible parts of an institution whose activity also takes place outside.
It is a local activity base serving an area within the station’s jurisdiction.
Rotation at a mainly urban kōban and an officer’s local residence at a chūzaisho, with operational exceptions.
Patrols cover an area for prevention, guidance and protection; visits focus on contact with particular households or businesses.
No. Tokyo’s consultants are retired officers with different functions from serving police officers.
Officers also patrol, visit residents and respond to incidents throughout the local area.
Collection objects and documentary photographs are identified by their particular object, period and use.